The Greatest Granny: Jennifer Schomburg Kanke’s The Swellest Wife Anyone Ever Had
By Madison Liming
Poet and fiction writer Jennifer Schomburg Kanke’s full-length poetry collection The Swellest Wife Anyone Ever Had (Kelsay Books, 2024) encompasses World War II, the Great Depression, and the Ohio River Flood of 1937, and it gives us a picture of the grandma we all wish we had. Spanning from 1919 to 2006, Kanke crafts a narrative that is both deeply personal and historically resonant, giving voice to the often-overlooked experiences of women who lived through those tumultuous times in Appalachian Ohio, including Kanke’s beloved grandmother, Enid. Enid is the primary inspiration behind the poems, serving as a central figure and occasional speaker, and she is a lens through which the reader experiences the hardships and joys of life in this region.
Upon discovery of a collection of old letters written to Enid during World War II by LeRoy Schomburg, Kanke draws inspiration from her grandmother’s relationships and the impact of historical events that affected all in Scioto County. Enid’s experiences as a wife, mother, and widow shape the bulk of the collection, offering a profound exploration of domesticity, resilience, and the passage of time.
Kanke’s poems, many of which were revised for over 20 years, are enriched by archival research, interviews, and the poet’s tender memories of her “Granny,” and they’re as full of life as their central character. The collection is divided into three distinct sections, grouping poems based on the respective time frame of Enid’s life. Kanke begins with “First Love,” introducing us to the resilient citizens of Scioto County and “the boy from the county home,” with whom a youthful Enid quickly falls in love. The boy spends the spring months working alongside Enid on her father’s farm, and they often share stolen glances. Kanke describes a tender love, one that was spent in the simple rhythms of rural life. However, in the summer of 1936, the boy gets let go from the farm, and Enid is soon forced to chart a different course during the devastating events of the Scioto flood.
The second part of the collection, “The Husband,” primarily describes Enid’s husband, LeRoy, during his time in the Pacific. We read about several trials and tribulations Enid faced while he was off at war, including raising her children during wartime. In her notes, Kanke explains that several poems in this section include italicized phrases which are direct quotes from LeRoy’s letters to Enid. In her poem “Platoon 339 Leaves Camp Lejeune and Is One Step Closer to the Front,” LeRoy writes, “If I don’t ever see you again, don’t feel bad about it, / for you were the swellest wife anyone ever had.” Kanke often finds in these striking moments of plainspokenness a true and tender wisdom.
Then there is “Enid, Herself,” the third and most essential section of Kanke’s collection. Spanning from 1962‐2006, we see a resilient Enid, raising four kids on her own and navigating the dating life after losing LeRoy in 1957. “The Widow’s Yoga” captures those strange moments of grief and nourishment:
They say she stood on her head,
stayed like that for days
letting her man wash out
through the crown to the earth.
They say that when she came down
she cooked beans and corn bread salted
with her own tears, which the kids
ate of heartily.
Kanke, whose book is usually understated and colloquial in order to capture the voice of its characters, makes use of her considerable lyrical skills here to turn her grandmother into a figure of legend. The repeated “They say” makes Enid’s grief—that head-over-heels pain that can salt both the ground and supper—into a kind of folk ballad.
This particular section also emphasizes Enid as a figure of lore, as our beloved “Granny” who, in the modified limerick “Best Behave Now II,” “was a woman from Scioto / who rode to church in a Toyota.”
Enid wore a “straw hat with fake flowers.”
Enid, we believe, is still “hunting buckeyes to string a holiday wreath.”
Enid, in other words, represents a figure of enduring strength, a woman who embodies the quiet dignity and hard-won wisdom of a life fully lived.
The Swellest Wife Anyone Ever Had is a comforting and slowly unfolding volume that reveals the beauty and richness of a seemingly simple life, and Kanke’s work creates characters we care about deeply, who leave us contemplating long after we have finished reading. Kanke writes about Enid in her final poem of the collection: “When her children find her, she will be nothing but an empty skin in the shape of a poem” (94), a beautiful metaphor for the legacy captured in this remarkable collection, and a reminder that the work of a poet is not only to write the poem, but to recognize the poetry in everyday life.
Madison Liming is a writer from Amanda, Ohio, completing a master’s in education at Ohio University.
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